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I know what you mean, when a was younger (in the 80's - early 90's) I trained and competed in TKD and in Kickboxing (not in official sanctionated comps) until well into the present century. Not that I was very good at it but I have some err.... experience in receiving and giving hard strikes.

Anyway, I have two problems with your approach:

One: It seems to me you try to use aikido waza against boxers at his game; unarmed standup striking. That's not going to work. Boxers weakness is in the clinch/throw/ground game. There is where you need to take the encounter.

Second: What is an aikido technique and what is not. It seems to me you are saying some techniques (like chokes or bear hugs) are not aikido techniques. Aikido techniques are not limited to the ones contained in beginners curriculum. Imagine for a moment someone who tells you the uppercut or the russian hook are not boxing techniques because he is a beginner who is still at the jab-cross phase and these techniques have not been taught to him... what you would say?

Maybe you're been exposed to an aikido that lacks martial value, or with small technical curriculum. Maybe your exposure to aikido has been too short and your knowledge of the curriculum is still limited. Maybe aikido is not what you imagine, or you've been told, to be.

Cheers.

BTW,

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Graham Christian wrote:

it's a matter of studying the opponent or scene and finding which principles ARE applicable to such rather than how to make the ones you know applicable.

Alberto.
Yes, the principle of MA-AI as you see needs to be in play all the time but remember I said that was an example which leads to no fight, add a few more principles and how they apply and you start getting somewhere.

Let's take tegatana for example. How to use it properly, something you can't do whilst wearing boxing gloves and something hardly allowed in any fights or sports I've watched. Just like the 'mallet' fist brought down on the top of the head is barred from boxing.

Tegatana is the hand sword. Of itself it is quite fleshy yet it is very powerful when understood. It is called the hand sword for a reason and that would be the same original reason in Karate. You use it as you would a sword.

Now when a boxer strikes, and because his striking art is more like a coiled spring action the attempting to do any kind of 'grab' would be very inadvisable. However cutting would be perfect.

Sometimes people ask me why there is not much or any kicking in Aikido and I tell them they will understand when they see the relationship of some of Aikido to the way of the Samurai. A samurai is waiting for a nice juicy extended limb to cut off.

Now when a boxer strikes a natural reaction for many is to try and block the punch. Imagine turning that block or parry into a cut. When used to it it's quite easy for he is giving you something to cut. Of course that is simplifying it but when a person is competant enough it is natural and unexpected by the boxer.

So the rule of thumb here is the practice of cutting and turning or turning and cutting.

Now staight jab or a right cross or hook usually makes a person 'parry' from the inside so to speak and thus leads them into the other hand, unless done as a cut complete with continuous motion.

Anyway, if you get used to entering outside the strike and cutting you move into a different zone of operation. I'll explain.

Right cross coming at you.

Now first remember what I said about tegatana, the hand sword. Imagine drawing a sword with your right hand because the sword is naturally hanging from the left hip. Now do that drawing motion with an open hand using tegatana as the blade.

Now when you can naturally move to that 'dead' side of the strike and at the same time cut like your drawing the sword I think you'll see it opens the door to more Aikido.

Aikido I teach is non-stop motion, there is no stopping there is only a continuous flow so its not a matter of step and cut it's a matter of doing that on the way to joining the opponent which leads more to irminage type actions and kokyu variations.

As with all types [...] situations in life or even business propositions it's a matter of studying the [...] scene and finding which principles ARE applicable to such rather than how to make the ones you know applicable.

Very true indeed. I find it applies very much to playing go and writing software (my other passion and my profession).

Second: What is an aikido technique and what is not. It seems to me you are saying some techniques (like chokes or bear hugs) are not aikido techniques.

Maybe you're been exposed to an aikido that lacks martial value, or with small technical curriculum. Maybe your exposure to aikido has been too short and your knowledge of the curriculum is still limited.

All the three possibilities apply at once!

As for chokes or bear hugs - I said they are not aikido because of these two elements:
1) any iriminage that would end up with choking my adversary, would end up also with the Sensei showing me( and rightly so) the door lol - nothing against using it in a real situation, of course.

2) on a more serious level, what i mean is this: chokes and bear hugs are not techniques not uniquely because they are not taught but, in my personal perception (which as such can be wrong), inasmuch as they are just natural brute force reactions, painted with a dash of despair, that anybody might attempt also without any Martial training.

My idea is that of banning any resort to brute force while in a situation where my opponent can use it freely.

That's precisely what attracted me, the Aikido challenge I sensed.
We don't find many places where the default training routine is designed to meet the great and complex difficulties that such a situation entails.
In this respect, active resistance becomes only one of the many riddles to solve, and probably not even the most threathening.

Thank you to you all for your perspectives I am trying to work them out - I hope also my considerations, despite my likely shortcomings in making my point understood, or the proposed youtube videos make clear why I find it so difficult and make some sense, at least occasionally

any iriminage that would end up with choking my adversary, would end up also with the Sensei showing me( and rightly so) the door

We practice tai jutsu irimi nage ending with a choke from time to time.
For tanto dori, jo dori, tachi dori this is our kihon waza.

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2) on a more serious level, what i mean is this: chokes and bear hugs are not techniques not uniquely because they are not taught but, in my personal perception (which as such can be wrong), inasmuch as they are just natural brute force reactions, painted with a dash of despair, that anybody might attempt also without any Martial training.

There are very few techniques in aikido which don't have parallels in other arts. (Is there just one?)

Doing irimi nage with a choke in the end has to be learned like doing it with a throw in the and. And it doesn't need brute force but good technique I think.

As for chokes or bear hugs - I said they are not aikido because of these two elements:
1) any iriminage that would end up with choking my adversary, would end up also with the Sensei showing me( and rightly so) the door lol

So maybe we are talking of one of the many versions/interpretations of aikido around, not about aikido in a general sense.

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2) on a more serious level, what i mean is this: chokes and bear hugs are not techniques not uniquely because they are not taught but, in my personal perception (which as such can be wrong), inasmuch as they are just natural brute force reactions, painted with a dash of despair, that anybody might attempt also without any Martial training.

My personal perception about these techniqes is different, because (a) they were taught to me and (b) they require skill and finesse for being properly done.

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My idea is that of banning any resort to brute force while in a situation where my opponent can use it freely.

Maybe you could find, if interested in learning how aikido works when faced with resisting opponents, another aikido style more appropiate to your interests. Not that the one seen in the video lacks value, but it seems they don't focus in teaching an aikido with inmediate aplicability to violent encounters.

well, to answer your question - as for the first video, actually excuse me if I take the liberty of insisting that's not aikido - unless I am wrong, the Sensei there is not showing to his pupils what they must do, but illustrating what an attacker might do.

In this respect, we are not encouraged, and I don't think that Sensei was encouraging, to react to an aggression producing, for instance, that bear hug - rather, you are shown a few possible attacks, to which you have to react with some techinique that is Aikido.

Uke could also attack you with a set of jab/right, yet certainly we would not deduce that hitting somebody with jab and right is the aikido technique expected by tori. The same, in my subjective perception, applies to bear hugs.
I mean, if you allow me to be cheeky, if we go that path, then also extracting a knife and pushing it deep in my opponent belly could be: I used aikido to defend myself, I used a tanto!

As for the last video, probably you're not going to believe me (I have at times the impression I may sound like somebody telling stories) I know that dojo. They have a good thing, they have randori as a daily practice - that, at least, leaves to you a training space where you can act with some liberty.
The video doesn't make justice to them: actually they have an approach to aikido that is more aggressive than other dojos I know - though by my standards still utterly insufficient - but that's me and my absurd ideals

When you say "they don't focus in teaching an aikido with inmediate aplicability to violent encounters" - Demetrio, that seems unfortunately the situation with nearly all dojos.

I have to train in the way I do because a dojo where they say to uke: now attack this guy, without any complacency, and throw punches all the way and pursue him till you corner him, everything goes, refuse any complacency when he attempts a technique, and use both arms, and if he gets a smack on his face well that's a Martial Arts dojo - never seen such a dojo,

But how can I, or anyone else I guess, hope of having been really trained to meet so complex a situation (I repost: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GYFYSS1zI_8 ), if such a situation is never reproduced in our default training?
That was/is my dilemma.

With this, let me thank you again for your videos and time. It's most appreciated!

ps I prefer ukes like these, then (not those who attack the sensei, those who attack the pupil - instance at min 3.05 onward):http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YziUvBqX-zI
It's alredy much more realistic than what I have seen thus far in dojos. Ukes shoudl attack you without regards, and no intention of accommodating you.

I learned this with boxing, so it's that paradigm that is leading (or misguiding) me: only permanent combat training eventually yields combat awareness.

well, to answer your question - as for the first video, actually excuse me if I take the liberty of insisting that's not aikido - unless I am wrong, the Sensei there is not showing to his pupils what they must do, but illustrating what an attacker might do.

In this respect, we are not encouraged, and I don't think that Sensei was encouraging, to react to an aggression producing, for instance, that bear hug - rather, you are shown a few possible attacks, to which you have to react with some techinique that is Aikido.

Uke could also attack you with a set of jab/right, yet certainly we would not deduce that hitting somebody with jab and right is the aikido technique expected by tori. The same, in my subjective perception, applies to bear hugs.

Hi again,

I think you are trapped in the tori/uke (attacker/defender) dichotomy, which is, imo, a false one. Don't worry, it happened to all of us... try go beyond that. The bear hug is as aikido as the technique used to defend it, and the technique which is used to counter said defense is aikido too, and so on and on and on.

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I mean, if you allow me to be cheeky, if we go that path, then also extracting a knife and pushing it deep in my opponent belly could be: I used aikido to defend myself, I used a tanto!

I have to train in the way I do because a dojo where they say to uke: now attack this guy, without any complacency, and throw punches all the way and pursue him till you corner him, everything goes, refuse any complacency when he attempts a technique, and use both arms, and if he gets a smack on his face well that's a Martial Arts dojo - never seen such a dojo,

May be it doesn't exist, but you can always train in what style of aikido is available and check your progress attending to boxing or mma gyms.

So, who are we to say what is and what is not an aikido waza? Do we know the entire possibilities of aikido?

Well, I know it's anathema: I never liked Ueshiba.
My impression has always been that all the good and the bad both that are in aikido, are his responsibility.

The good being of having envisioned a Martial Art entirely based upon defense and where brutal force is poscribed.

The bad being that in developing such an art, he has never been concerned with the fact it was clearly evolving towards fictional grounds that many Martial Artists (let's exclude me for I am neither martial nor an aritst: i'm a nuisance!) have often vocally noticed and denounced.

You can control an aggressor in many ways. If we go along this path, Demetrio, we can also arrive at the conclusion that gunfire is aikido.
In my humble perception, and I know I can be wrong, those videos where they face each others with tantos, are not designed to say that in akido you can defend yourself from a tanto wielding a tanto yourself - once again, they are designed to provide a training setting where, probably in order to save time, both act at once as ukes and toris.

if I would find a dojo where they instruct me about how to stab my opponent, I would leave that dojo immediately: i don't want to learn how to stab people (i'm not planning to produce a criminal record lol), or how to bear hug them (i already know how to do that ).
I want to learn how to produce pure techniques within the most aggressive and violent setting, with my bare hands and no punches: only leverages and projection.

Oh, let's be clear about this: I fully understand and even encourage your personal perspective about it: if you find allright defending yourself with a tanto or with bear hugs, I cannot but say you're right. In a real fight, most likely, one will end up forfeting all aikido (that's my point, sigh), and fighting fire with fire.

It's just that the Aikido I want is the one where my opponent can do whatever he wants, whereas I have plenty of limitations: only leverges and projections, and no force allowed except that which could move say 15 kilos.
Bear hug or chokes? No no no no no....

«A man may be a heretic in the truth; and if he believe things only because his pastor says so, or the assembly so determine, without knowing other reason, though his belief be true, yet the very truth he holds becomes his heresy.»

My impression has always been that all the good and the bad both that are in aikido, are his responsibility.

To a great extent, yes. No doubt.

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The good being of having envisioned a Martial Art entirely based upon defense and where brutal force is poscribed.

Are you sure, really really sure, about this?

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The bad being that in developing such an art, he has never been concerned with the fact it was clearly evolving towards fictional grounds that many Martial Artists (let's exclude me for I am neither martial nor an aritst: i'm a nuisance!) have often vocally noticed and denounced.

However there are various accounts of him heavily scolding Hombu aikido students for not doing "real" aikido... I think he was concerned, but lacked the power (or the skills) needed to enforce his vision.

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You can control an aggressor in many ways. If we go along this path, Demetrio, we can also arrive at the conclusion that gunfire is aikido

Mochizuki Sensei, one of his direct students (and aikido pioneer in Europe back in the 50's) arrived to the same conclusion.

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In my humble perception, and I know I can be wrong, those videos where they face each others with tantos, are not designed to say that in akido you can defend yourself from a tanto wielding a tanto yourself - once again, they are designed to provide a training setting where, probably in order to save time, both act at once as ukes and toris.

Of course there is a possibility. Can we ask the designer of this exercises about their purpose?

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if I would find a dojo where they instruct me about how to stab my opponent, I would leave that dojo immediately: i don't want to learn how to stab people (i'm not planning to produce a criminal record lol), or how to bear hug them (i already know how to do that ).
I want to learn how to produce pure techniques within the most aggressive and violent setting, with my bare hands and no punches: only leverages and projection.

Well, if it is what you want go for it, but IMO, you're leaving aside lots of valuable lessons.

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Oh, let's be clear about this: I fully understand and even encourage your personal perspective about it: if you find allright defending yourself with a tanto or with bear hugs, I cannot but say you're right. In a real fight, most likely, one will end up forfeting all aikido (that's my point, sigh), and fighting fire with fire.

Sometimes fighting fire with fire is the most sensible and compassionate option. Ask a firefigter.

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It's just that the Aikido I want is the one where my opponent can do whatever he wants, whereas I have plenty of limitations: only leverges and projections, and no force allowed except that which could move say 15 kilos.
Bear hug or chokes? No no no no no....

It's just that the Aikido I want is the one where my opponent can do whatever he wants, whereas I have plenty of limitations: only leverges and projections, and no force allowed except that which could move say 15 kilos.

Thank you for your videos.
Actually they are all good as fas as a theorical approach to incoming punches go.

Now, though this may work with an unexperienced puncher (a guy who never threw punches before, or a guy whos is an amateurish Thai Boxe trainee who believes he is tough because he never experienced a real competition), I am quite positive about what I am saying here, and the message I am trying to convey: you will never do anything like that to a boxer (you won't need a pro) who has say 30 official fights under his belt (this means about 3 years of training - or 2 too).

Actually, I know what's the reason for this.
A person who has never been on a ring with an experienced boxer, will never realize exactly how dangerous and difficult the situation can be - this aside from the fact that the real boxer will actually hit you: this alone makes a lot of difference for tori.

But the real reason is that a person who, unlike the videos, is punching you seriously, will never be so mild and slow. Those are not even punches. They can be the punches that I, after over 20 years without competitions and boxing, might sadly throw now. But 20 years ago, let me say: a boxer is fast, terribly fast, quick on foot, moves instantly in all directions, and his punches arrive with a rapidity that oftentimes you won't even see them.

Months ago I was in a dojo and there was this dan doing yokomenuchi to me. He lifted his whole arm and then attenpted to hit me.
I told him: don't lift your arm like that: if you do, I will know what your'e going to do, that's "un colpo telefonato" - I don't know if in Anglo-Saxon boxing jargon you have this Italian term: telefonato.
It translates: "(tele)phoned". The meaning is that if I can foresee what you're throwing at me, it's as if you were lifting a phone and calling me first to let me know what's coming

The guy was very perplexed - apparently he didn't even know the term (which in my opinion speaks a long story about how we never let our aikidokas train within a realistic setting). He repeated a few times to himself, mumbling, "telefonato?". He seemed pinched in his pride, though it was not my intention. My intention was to test something realistic.

He said: I'll show to you.

he lifted again his arm up to his head, and produced a yokomenuchi that, evidently, in his conception was "fast". I only had to see when he lifted, wait half a second and then lower.
I lowered twice because to an hook may always follow another hook and as I stood up I threw two direct punches with open hands at his chest.
In a real situation, that would have been a broken tooth. Koteageshi after that

The attacks we see in those videos are not like a real attack. Please keep in mind that I am not arguing or being polemical - I am trying, with great difficulty, to convey the fact that real competent punches are terribly fast. This in the interest of our Aikido efficacy.

The guy in the videohttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6zLatvvYg5I
if he attenpts that irimi to a competent boxer, let me say what happens: uke will go one step backward instantly, and tori will go to meet the ultrafast following right of his uke, and in meeting it, he will sum the force of uke's right direct blow with the force of his incoming irimi, and tori will see the mat. In Italian, that's "un colpo di incontro" (incontro=meet).
A competent uke won't "hug" him with his right arm: would hit him with a totally straight trajectory.

The guy in the videohttp://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6zLatvvYg5I
if he attenpts that irimi to a competent boxer, let me say what happens: uke will go one step backward instantly, and tori will go to meet the ultrafast following right of his uke, and in meeting it, he will sum the force of uke's right direct blow with the force of his incoming irimi, and tori will see the mat. In Italian, that's "un colpo di incontro" (incontro=meet).
A competent uke won't "hug" him with his right arm: would hit him with a totally straight trajectory.

Our ukes don't act competently, and not even naturally. They all behave like ukes with one arm, and they produce slanted trajectories with ineffectual hands hovering there in order to accommodate us.
This is, unfortunately, endemic in Aikido.

Another rinstance: tanto practive, uke must stab my tummy.
I don't produce the technique, because I want to make sure of a thing first.
So as uke throws his tanto imagining I will do something, i do nothing and stay there.
Guess what?

His tanto goes about 30 centimeters away from my right side.
I stay there and look at him: "I am here, my friend. There is nobody there..."

They help us.
To get killed, because acting like that they generate in us the false confidence that a real attack might go for the air at our sides instead than for our body.
that's what that guy does in the video: his right arm never goes straight to meet tori.
Don't ever attempt that with someobdy who is competent, or with somebody about whom you're not sure (say in the street): you will get a terrible straight punch in your face and it's gonna be devastating without boxing gloves on.
Attempt something else. But don't irimi a stranger like that: if he is competent, you will discover then that uke can throw direct blows and iven if you glo sligthly lateral, a real uker can still produce a direct blow following the diagonal to your face, and rotate slightly his hips to meet you better. He will hit tori squarely, and in a real situation such a punch is gonna be final, believe me. I got them on my face long ago!

He will not let his right arm flounder nearly flaccid in the air like that.

I told him: don't lift your arm like that: if you do, I will know what your'e going to do, that's "un colpo telefonato" - I don't know if in Anglo-Saxon boxing jargon you have this Italian term: telefonato.
It translates: "(tele)phoned". The meaning is that if I can foresee what you're throwing at me, it's as if you were lifting a phone and calling me first to let me know what's coming

The attacks we see in those videos are not like a real attack. Please keep in mind that I am not arguing or being polemical - I am trying, with great difficulty, to convey the fact that real competent punches are terribly fast. This in the interest of our Aikido efficacy.

Yes, a good boxer will be much faster than what most demos illustrate. A friend of mine isn't a particularly "good" boxer and I had a hard time entering quick enough on his 1-2, and 1-2-3 combos the last time we played around. Even his single jabs were hard for me, though it didn't help that he had a huge reach advantage over me...or that I'm simply not very well-practiced. Now, I was able to not get hit hard and get close enough to do some stuff, but I often got hit. A really good striker would have probably laid me out unless I got very very lucky.

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His tanto goes about 30 centimeters away from my right side.

Now that's a pretty big mistake. I've been fortunate that the couple places I've trained at were very quick to correct this kind of mistake. I've been hit a number of times because I didn't get off the line of attack quick enough. I also really liked the Shodokan method of tanto randori I experienced because you're allowed to use feints and the like. Even with just a couple attack options, when done right, it's very hard not to get what would be various sized slices here and there.

Yes, a good boxer will be much faster than what most demos illustrate. A friend of mine isn't a particularly "good" boxer and I had a hard time entering quick enough on his 1-2, and 1-2-3 combos the last time we played around. Even his single jabs were hard for me, though it didn't help that he had a huge reach advantage over me...or that I'm simply not very well-practiced. Now, I was able to not get hit hard and get close enough to do some stuff, but I often got hit. A really good striker would have probably laid me out unless I got very very lucky.

Exactly Matthew. Although I know this wasn't your purpose, yet you seem the one who illustrates best the points at times I am attempting to make - with mixed results.

To be sure, this ought to be understood: I am not insisting on the difficulties that arise from facing a skilled puncher in order to say that boxing is superior to aikido - if that would have been my conclusion, or even worse my puerile implication, I would just stick to boxing and wonder no further.
No one loves wasting time

It is, rather, that I have never seen to date any training, and not even any video, where our techniques are attempted against the type of opponent that you experienced and that here you describe.
I commend you for the keen awareness of its implications - they don't seem so obvious to everybody, Matthew. Yet they are real.

Our ukes seems all one armed. If our training would let us face how a skilled puncher attacks (and this is not immaterial a scenario, because competent fighters and strikers are far mor common as a real occurrence than somebody attacking you in a bar with a sword, or grabbing both your wrists from behind and waiting there who knows for what), how he has feet and jumps, how he has the capability of stepping back fast (our ukes haven't it), how he can pivot on himself ultrafast (our ukes are either slow, or still), how he can step back and pivot at once (our ukes can't walk and think at the same time lol), how he can keep hurling punches as he does that (our ukes throw only one at best, and they are quite sluggish to re-chamber), how he can be fast to re-chamber - then you realize how difficult it is to apply an Aikido technique.

If you manage - endgame. That's the good thing with that!

Bu the road that leads there, may be paved with our knock-outs, borken noses, split lips, wounded eyebrows, swollen and closed eyes, jumping teeth. Ugly, not classy as in demos.

Considering how difficult it is to apply our techiniques in these settings even when we rightly implement safety measures (here we punch with open hands and at chest level only), we would instantly quit training letting 6 guys with tantos attack us as we cheerrfully get rid of them all as nuisances.

the truth is, against a skilled puncher, ONE alone and even without a knife in his hands, we'd have a troublesome, lousy and miserable time before we land our scrambled waza.
Yet it is the only time worth spending, though.

I am having a hard time, and spending a considerable amount of time, trying to work out a training that may meet these requirements - for we haven't it, and I am the least equipped, with my lousy aikido, to invent it.

Yesterday I scrambled for a shiho nage. I ended up with his rigid arm (do they mention that in order to produce a good shiho nage you have FIRST to turn uke's hand palm upward?) above my head as he had already turned towards me in order to hit me fictionally (open hand) and yet precisely with his other arm right on my chin - repeatedly, while subtracting with vehemence his arm from my shiho nage and starting hitting me again with both arms.

This past Wednesday evening I had a new student, a young (to me anyway) polish guy who works for a friend of mine. He's full of energy and what he can do and has done. In the past I have told him I only practice the art of no fighting as he always wants to fight so I tell him he needs something else.

However, I finally let him come to a class.

I showed the class what to do and told them I would be taking the new guy for I knew he would be 'trouble'

You should have seen the other students faces when he walked in, complete with gum shield. I asked him what that was for and he said 'we fighting no?'

As it was a test lesson for him I told him I would run through some basics with him and give him an idea what Aikido was about but meanwhile he could try different things against me.

He said he was a good boxer and knife fighter and I could see he couldn't wait for the opportunity to show me. By the things he tried I found he had some experience in groundwork which he said was brazillian ju jutsu, some flashy way of attacking with a jo, a real mixed bag.

The point is he was unpredictable, tried many things including kicks and staff verses sword and I even gave him a tanto as he asked if he could try using a plastic bottle so he didn't hurt me.

Suffice to say he didn't learn much Aikido yet he did learn what Aikido was. (and indeed what it wasn't) He ended up quite happy yet a bit bemused. He hadn't a clue how I did what I did and ended up telling me I'm a great fighter. Alas, I am not. I am a good no fighter.

He also concluded that he wanted to learn this 'Aikido' because it seemed to operate from different rules and yet for him he said it could be the perfect self defence and then he could use what else he knew for attack. Ah well, then it wasn't a waste of time then.

Now here's the thing. When training is done like this, like that guy, the person learns no Aikido. He learned the effect of it only. As a teacher I found the lesson boring. As a challenge I found it interesting.

You see there are no short cuts to learning how to deal with such 'real' opponents and trying to do so without enough training is indeed trying to take a short cut and thus you fail.

You see there are no short cuts to learning how to deal with such 'real' opponents and trying to do so without enough training is indeed trying to take a short cut and thus you fail.

I don't know this guy, but there is plenty of guys who think they are expert.
In my intention, being able to fight doesn't mean being a troublemaker, but it is simply the whole goal and purpose of any Martial Art, because it is exactly by tapping into that formative ground that also the spiritual meaning eventually emerges, and its highly educational side acquires a final consistency.

They will never train me to face a real attacker in dojos. Simply never. I realized that, and though unpopular to be verbalized, nonetheless here I take the liberty of speaking my mind - they drove me to that conclusion.

They will keep me there years, and I may never realize I learned nothing truly usable - all techniques against ukes that do nothing consistent, all limited in scope and with ukes never at liberty of truly resisting and then going on attacking me without restraints. They just cower there like well instructed sheep who know they are supposed to fall - and so they fall.
.
Once I determined that was it with dojos, at least here, i had to decide whether I wanted to pursue a belt whatever and give to them 4 years of my money in order to do shio nages on flaccid arms that stay there for the purpose, or try to find a creative way to train in a more realistic way.

"Fighting" in those dojos it's like being in bed with a woman who does nothing and just lays there still and silent, I guess. You call it sex lol
1 hour there, and 10 actual minutes of training. No intensity. You may easily go out without having produced one drop of sweat, at times.

As long as I won't be able to place a koetgaeshi and a shiho nage as it pleases me against a massive attack, i won't take time to learn any other technique. These already are posing to me unsurmuntable difficulties against determined attackers. It's all totally different from a dojo.

It seems there is no fighting awareness.
Way before learning a technique, if you want to use it against a skilled attacker, you need fighting awareness.
I am at times near to the absurd conclusion that running through a door and bumping with intensity against its sides, may be more realistic and useful

I don't know. But I am stubborn and I rarely leave my hold on a bone. It may need 10 years before I give up and say: I have not found any viable way to train - a way that i can train also alone because I won't always have effective and determined ukes, these guys also have a life and can't fight with me more than once a week at times.

I'll keep trying. I want to find something. There must be something. There must be a way to do real aikido also if you have no dojo for that, not even within 500 km.

Kotegaeshi - determine a lateral projection (the aikido technique most good on camera, and yet the most dangerous one - people seems to worry about tendons, yet if you fall on your neck, that's much more worrisome).
Cut on the wrist, push down towards your hip, plummeting, push outward with the other hand on the hand you've cut down.
With a rigid wrist (which is mostly the case) don't get intimidated, just do it. Easier to be said than done :-)

shihonage: that technique where they invariably fail to explain to you that it will never work if you don't make sure, first, that your uke's palm is turned upward. If you manage, it allows a great control, for once on the side of uke you won't even need to push down his hand - walking would suffice to make him fall.
I have no idea whi even Ueshiba does it, often, pausing before rotating on himself - it should be one flux.

Both techniques imply that a striker repeatedly punching you does not succeed, at one given moment to prevent you from going lateral. Going lateral under incoming blows and with an uke highly dynamic on feet is probably the WHOLE challe nge to make aikido usable in a real fight.

If we consider that in all dojos we still see attacks made as a shokomenuchi, we can't help but think that we are reproducing a false paradigm - the paradigm of a samurai whose sword has been taken away from him, utterly unacquainted with the extremely violent settings that a, say, "bar fight" in the WESTERN world may imply.

That's the whole issue: managing to go lateral against an opponent repeatedly punching you and fast on feet, determined to keep facing you.
We never train for this scenario. What we see on videos with tsuki+aikido is invariably performed on kes that do not display the full range of motility, brute force and determination that a real and a bit competent striker may produce.